Storm Properties Heads for Spring Opening

TORRANCE, CA-Storm Properties expects to open the first phase of the locally based developer's 400,000-sf Storm Industrial Park in the spring of next year, having recently tilted the walls on the first phase several weeks ahead of schedule. The first phase of the new development will offer multi-tenant buildings designed for light manufacturing and assembly.

Storm Industrial Park is a 10-building, class A industrial development, with phase one of the project consisting of two buildings of approximately 22,000 sf and nearly 50,000 sf. Kent Phillips, president of Storm Properties, notes that the development site is close to the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County that Storm Properties is redeveloping.

Storm Properties, part of one of the oldest continuously operated companies in Southern California, is developing the new industrial park on a 40-acre site where the company sees demand from tenants seeking a wide range of building sizes.

Phillips, in an interview with GlobeSt.com when the project first got under way, told GlobeSt.com that the 75-year-old company would develop the 10 new buildings at Storm Industrial Park in a broad variety of sizes in order to appeal to the widest possible range of prospective tenants. The development site, on Storm Parkway near the cross streets of Normandie and Sepulveda, is an infill location that is part of extensive land holdings that Storm Properties assembled over many years.

The 10 new buildings at Storm Industrial Park will join eight that Storm developed beginning in the mid-1980s. Those older buildings and the new development at the industrial park came about as Storm Properties and its parent company evolved in a way that parallels the evolution of the Southern California economy over the decades.

Storm's parent company, Storm Industries, began as a manufacturing concern in 1932 when industrialist Walter Storm established a brass foundry, later expanding into other related areas of manufacturing. The company acquired land primarily to have sites available for manufacturing facilities, but as conditions changed and manufacturing became less viable in the Southland, Storm slowly moved its manufacturing offshore and looked for other uses for its properties.

The first eight buildings at Storm Industrial Park, for example, were built on land that the company had owned for some time but did not need for manufacturing. The 10 new buildings are being developed at former manufacturing facilities that are being redeveloped for warehouse, light manufacturing and light assembly uses. The new Storm project is listed with CB Richard Ellis.